


Reporter Found Dead Hoarding Fast Food

by qeacock



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Gender-Neutral Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Eddie Brock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-11 01:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18419609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qeacock/pseuds/qeacock
Summary: The skin in the middle of his fingers feels thicker.He cannot explain the way it slightly feels wrong to close his fingers all the way, like something may have grown between them.// set after the life rocket explosion: how long did it take for venom to come back?





	Reporter Found Dead Hoarding Fast Food

Why is it so quiet?

The seconds are inordinately loud, as if he can feel each one tick onto his skin. He'll run out of skin to count the time on, and the seconds will tick on his organs, in his brain, scrape against the base of his spine, where there is nothing but himself.

And isn't that a shocking thought; the thought that he might feel too big for his own skin.

Eddie keeps shaking his head, his jaw twitching, like there's something stuck between his ears. The silence is distracting, all his nerves standing on end, frayed.

 

He has not washed that same hoodie since the sky went up. It is stupid to question what they might have smelled like, their spindly, weavy structure a complete oddity - not unlike the smell before rainfall, a barely there, barely grasped scent but always remembered.  
He presses his fingers against it, remembers how the shadows had become wholly enveloping. Tucks it far into the closet. Doesn't look at it again.

He's brushing his teeth in front of the mirror, willing his eyes to go white, veiny black around his mouth, teeth. There is nothing but the sound of his heartbeat, his breath. His toothbrush is a scrape against every tooth, like with metal nails, and the space in his mouth is too _big_ for him. Everywhere feels like free space, a whole pocket of NOTHING where there should be _THEM_.

He's pissed, now, and spits the paste out of his mouth, washes it out with water.  
Smacks the toothbrush into the sink.

Eddie pauses instinctively in every one of his interviews, like he'd hear them and their powerful, rumbling voice say something inane, and stupid, and… strange.

_Jackass_ , they'd say, _I'm a loser on my world too_ , they had said.

The guy stops talking, and wonders in that pause.

"Continue," he says, scribbling in his pad, but it's not what they would have said. Should be deeper. 

It should shake the room.

 

 

WHY is it so QUIET?

He shouts without realising, reverberating off of every surface. It feels good, like they would have said it, but it is not deep, and bassy, and a rumbling quiver. Eddie's eyes are pressed shut. There's a constant drone buzzing in the space between his ears, bouncing around in his skull. Migraine flicks at the inners of his skull, the artery in his brain thumping hard.  
His throat is dry. His apartment is awful. The couch and the tv are the only things that are not turned over, or smashed to bits. He wants to just say mask, and the shadows might envelop him fully again, share the same space with his liver, and kidneys, and heart.

But it doesn't, does it?

That last thread of hope thins, and breaks.

 

 

Human is not something that he thought he might regret, but he feels painfully so, now. To a degree.

Painfully _human_.

He keeps staring in the mirror, like he might get a single ounce of that power that they gave him, and the black might start bulging through his veins, pulse through his arteries.

 

The skin in the middle of his fingers feels thicker. He cannot explain the way it slightly feels wrong to close his fingers all the way, like something may have grown between them.

No, no, _no_ , it ISN'T them - they are- they are-

He sighs, bringing his hands down his face. His jacket does not fit snugly against his skin, and he doubts it ever will.

 

In the days that follow, he is constantly hungry. His stomach contracts, repeatedly, like it's empty - the boxes of Chinese he's pulled from the fridge are contrary, he thinks. Anne has gone to voicemail four times, and really he should be guilty, and call her back, but he will say something stupid. He always does when he gets itchy like this, _hungry_ , like this. 

"What's wrong with me?" Eddie says, not for the first time, in the mirror, and the déjà vu hits him like whiplash, stinging around the jaw. He does not retch into the toilet bowl, this time, but the space in the back of his throat is deceivingly dry. His stomach feels like it's making cartwheels, over, and over, and he has to lay down. 

 

"Anne, I really appreciate your concern, really I do," 

_We are hungry,_ in his head, bouncing around in his ears, and his heart jackknifes into his mouth, his stomach hitting the floor. It's _impossible_.

"Get a grip, stop hallucinating," he whispers, his voice catching, and says quickly, before Anne can say anything about them,  
"And no, no you don't need to come over, I'm fine, really."

_Hallucination?_ He becomes so dizzy with the confused relief and denial that singular voice gives him that his breath just stops, and hitches, his heart running around his body like it had _any_ right to do that.

"Eddie? Eddie I'm coming over."

"No, no, no, it's fine! Anne-"

The line goes dead, and he presses the phone tight to his chest, white knuckled.

"That's not cool shit, dude," he says, smacking the side of his skull with the heel of his palm. It is silent, in his head, like it is so disappointingly, and his heart waits there a long while, sliding back down into his throat. His jacket fits well, and snug against his skin. He burrows into it - he's just put on weight. It would not have been hard to believe. He is still hungry, now, and sweating, but it is fine.

 

"Hey Anne!" he says, too enthusiastically to be casual, or even friendly- it's rushed, and confused, and he knows, but oh he is so, so hungry. His stomach clamps around nothing. Eddie feels like he is starving, and he has gone through every single item of food in his house, rotting or not, in the trash or fridge. It's all the same to him, and inescapable.  
"Just, just wait there a moment-" 

He sees the the top of her head peek through the door. A flash of the news article smears in his brain - Reporter Found Dead Hoarding Fast Food - and he gets off the coach, quickly, pulls all the stuff off the table into his arms, dumps it into the bin. The rest of the apartment is rated average about a 2 or 1 on the hygiene scale.

Anne lets herself in.

_Eat! Eat!_

He shakes his head, says, "No, we talked about this - we can't eat good people," and shuts his jaw with both his hands, his eyes wide. Didn't mean to say that.

"Eddie," she says, drawing out the last vowels, very slowly, and tiptoes further towards him,  
"You are telling me everything, right?"

 

"I'm-I'm just hallucinating," he swallows, "Uh, hearing things, you know? Crazy right?"

He opens the fridge door, instinctively, his stomach growling, and takes a leg of raw chicken, clawing it out of the plastic, eating it, the blood gurgling out of his mouth. What is he _doing?_

"What the fuck," she smacks him, lightly, on the cheek, and snatches the horrible, wet leg, the flesh dangling off it.

 

"Eddie, doing this won't make them come back," there's a hit of venom in her voice ( _hah,_ ) but her eyes are squinted, her brows twisted together.

"Trust me, I'm very much aware," he says, his fingers itching, clawing at that god awful piece of dead chicken. He needs to eat, he needs to eat, why can't anne see how his stomach is consuming itself?

He's still chewing the cold flesh in his mouth, inhaling it. The taste is barely there.

"What are you doing? Look at yourself,"  
He knows, he knows. The whole room looks like the aftermath of a college frat party. He looks like he's climbed mount everest seven times.

"Im scared."

There it is. The whole, naked truth, and he wants to hide.  
"There's _NOTHING_ in my skin - why is it gone? I-I-I-I know, I know what you'll say, I know, it doesn't matter, they were never a true part of you,"  
Hot tears try to slide down his cheeks, burning in the small space between his eyes and eyelid.

It's some sick joke, the voice in the head, and he's so _angry_ he can hardly think. Irritating, irremovable itch.

" _FUCK!_ "

He brings his hand down, hard on the counter, and the pain erupts into his arm, clanging and settling into the fine grooves in his bones, like hitting a funny bone.  
A constant, cobbling pressure, grounding, but the hunger is so _ANNOYING_. He just wants to eat Anne, suddenly, and he is disgusted.

Anne flinches, and gasps, and he tries to apologise but his brain keeps dragging him back by its little grimy fingers. 

"Please tell me it's real," he says, in a voice too tiny for his jaw, 

And she looks and looks at him,  
Says nothing at all.

 

 

The drive to the hospital is alienly quiet. He keeps tapping at the glass, like they will get annoyed at him, and tell him to stop, but they don't, and they never will.

Anne keeps looking at him in her mirror. He wants to tell her to focus on the road, but he doesn't - and the silence wails into his mind inexplicably. 

He gets a feeling like shivers all down his body, pins and needles, his hands too full to close. Perhaps Riot might just appear from nowhere, unbelievably, and smash the car, for whatever reason, some blood-filled lust to watch Eddie's own symbiote blitz to pieces.

Well, maybe Riot already has.

 

 

 

His heart is jumping into his mouth, sitting on his tongue. Every nerve feels put on end. He knows how MRI scans feel, now, painful, stinging, muscle spasm. But they shouldn't, and they won't, and the tiny strand of hope he has is crushed under his heel, blown into the wind for someone else.

_Eddie, no, it will hurt us,_ nothing reacts. It's like his whole body is given up. His heart just stays flat, and steady. The voice is not real. They are gone.

He lies flat on his back.

_Eddie,_ repeated, louder each time. It isn't real.

The table starts to slide. He is instinctively afraid of the pitch, but it is not there.

_We are going to get hurt. Eddie!_

It's so loud in his head that he almost wants to think it could be there. Everything in his body is displaced, like they had scrambled through his organs, panicking. 

He is just afraid that some foolish part of his brain might think that they are still sharing his skin, and that the sky had not burnt them all away into cinders.

Fuck- too raw, he thinks, just as the MRI starts.

Then, he screams.

His whole body is pulled taut, shocked into deep, electric spasms that leave him twisting and smacking into every surface. The light is blinding, and a searing, tangible presence at the forefront of his mind, splitting every crack in his skull wide open.

Somewhere, Anne shouts stop, over and over, but he can't think - his brain feels like complete slosh, his blood fizzing in his skin, and there is _something_ , reaching out of his ribs, pulling, trying to get out of him. No, he tries to say, and ends up biting his tongue instead, the blood hot, and focusing in his mouth.

"Oh my god, oh my god," Anne is pulling him so close to her chest, hugging him, he dumbly thinks, his eyes rolling in his skull.

_What was that for, loser,_ and he wants to laugh, cry, kick the wall. Stop, it's real, don't, I can't, all things he wants to say but doesn't possess any ability to, Anne tucking his head over her shoulder. He spits the blood out of his mouth, a gory little spray on her shirt. Sorry, he wants to say, but remembers that he possibly shouldn't speak.

"Fuck, are you- both of you," she breathes. He can tell the air is sliding down her throat, the same it had done for him when he had drafted the whole article referring to himself as we, remembering the empty space in his jacket.

"We're really here," he chokes, finally, spilling all of his hot, angry, unshed tears into her jacket, wondering how anyone couldn't feel that same lonely space between all of their clothing, in their blood, in their arteries. 

"We're here, both of us." 

His hands are shaking, all of him, and his skin doesn't feel so big anymore.


End file.
